


Conversations at the End of the Universe

by stickster (all_these_ghosts)



Category: Star Wars Legends: New Jedi Order Era - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-01-17
Updated: 2006-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 07:29:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8881381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/all_these_ghosts/pseuds/stickster
Summary: When there's nowhere else to go, you leave.





	

Jaina slid down the wall, her knees finding their way to her chest without her knowledge or permission. She curled in on herself, staring blankly at the legs of the people walking down the hall.  
  
Her senses noted the approach of a familiar body just before her mother joined her on the floor, for once unconcerned with propriety. The cuffs of Leia's pants were torn and bloodied beyond repair.  
  
Mother and daughter sat side by side, oblivious to the throngs of people around them. Everyone was racing somewhere: to identify the dead, to reunite with loved ones, to attend debriefings, to shower. Everyone with somewhere to go was going somewhere.  
  
Finally, Leia spoke. "I'm sorry, Jaina."  
  
"For what?" Jaina asked dully.  
  
"I should have protected you better. All of you." Her voice cracked, and she stopped to collect herself. "To have lost two of my three children--"  
  
"The Fels have lost two-thirds of their children," Jaina pointed out, though she neglected to mention how the last died. "And no one would ever say that Baron Fel doesn't know how to protect his children."  
  
"You're all I have left, Jaina."  
  
"We--I know. Me and the galaxy." In the place where Jaina's reproach might have held bitterness, there was only cold. This simple statement of fact: that even with her sons and husband gone, Leia's true child--that great government born of her education and courage and iron will--would survive. And so would she.  
  
Leia nodded. Her brown eyes flickered over to her daughter, but only briefly. It was too hard to look at her now: it used to be so easy to see herself in Jaina, but now all she recognized were the scars. "You're leaving."  
  
"Yes."  
  
"When?"  
  
Jaina looked down at her nails; began to pick dirt out from beneath them. It was so pointless, she thought: the way the dirt she scraped out from beneath one nail just ended up beneath the other. "Tonight."  
  
"Where are you going to go?"  
  
"Away."  
  
A loud exhalation escaped Leia's mouth. "You're not telling me."  
  
"Not leaving to get found, Mom."  
  
"Take the _Mil_ \--"  
  
" _No_." A pause, and the edge disappeared from Jaina's tone. "No. I can find my own way."  
  
"Doing what?" Leia asked sharply, too aware of how little Jaina had: no money, no ship, no contacts. Only an ancient weapon, one that had failed to save anyone Leia had ever loved--and the newer, deadlier weapon that Jaina had forged of herself nine years ago, when Leia wasn't looking. "Stealing? Killing? Lying?"  
  
"If we have to."  
  
"You _don't_ have to."  
  
"Don't have anything else."  
  
"You don't have to leave."  
  
"Don't have anywhere else to go."  
  
Leia shifted and sighed, reaching a hand out to her daughter. Jaina flinched at the near touch, and Leia just shook her head. "Have I lost all three of my children?"  
  
"At least you got to have them at all."  
  
" _Them?_ "  
  
Jaina just gave her a sad smile. "Whoever you think I am, Mom, I'm not her." She laughed shortly and pulled at the end of her loose tank top. "Not your daughter, Mom. Not for a long time."  
  
"Who else would you be?"  
  
Jaina swallowed. Looked down at the ground, whispered: "A Killik. A sword." She stood up abruptly and pressed her palms flat against the durasteel wall, pushing so hard that Leia could see her muscles shudder. "A corpse."  
  
"You're not dead, Jaina--"  
  
"No?" She pushed back roughly from the wall and glared down at her mother. "There was a point when I made a choice. When I felt Zekk die, after Jacen fell and after _you_ killed Jag--when I _felt him die_ , when everything my head went silent." Silence in the middle of a raging battle; silence with weight. Silence that carried the weight of a tall, thin, dark-haired man; the weight of all the love he'd carried for her. She took a deep breath and continued. "I chose not to start shooting at anything and everything. I chose _not_ to get on this ship and start murdering everyone who might have been responsible for what happened.  
  
"I chose to die. There wasn't another choice. I could fall again, or I could shut down. It wasn't even a choice. Not really." She couldn't really remember the last time she'd made a real choice--the last time she hadn't been certain that her hand was forced.  
  
Leia stood up, facing off with her daughter. She wouldn't ask Jaina to stay for her, as much as she wanted to--because she didn't want to beg, and because she already knew her daughter would refuse. So she tried a different tactic: "You're being selfish, Jaina. There is important work to do here."  
  
Unexpectedly, Jaina began to laugh. " _I'm_ being _selfish?_ " she barked, her usually smooth voice hoarse and gravelly. "The work to be done here is yours. It's the only work you've ever cared about, but I never have. I cared about the Alliance and I fought like hell for it because you did--because it protected us. Now it's corrupt and it's failed all of us and--" She struggled to keep her voice even slightly controlled but failed, leaving her last words trailing on a moan. "There's nothing worth saving here."  
  
Leia shut her eyes, picturing her own twin, remembering what he had risked to save their father--to give a Sith lord and a murderer redemption. Her husband, taking into his care a teenaged boy who destroyed an entire planet, and that same boy rescuing her daughter from a similar fate. Planets destroyed by the Yuuzhan Vong that, less than decade later, were once again home to wildlife and sentients numbering in the billions.  
  
And Leia found herself shaking her head and saying with a quiet certainty she hadn't felt in years, "There is always something worth saving."  
  
Jaina's jaw dropped. "You're unbelievable," she said. "How can you still believe that? You can't honestly believe that _this_ was worth dying for--to end up alone with no future, with--Force. It's _all gone_. You can't be that stupid."  
  
Leia leveled her gaze on her daughter, finally completely certain that this was not, in fact, her daughter. With dirty hands and lank hair and bruised arms, the woman before her could have been Jaina after any one of the hundreds of battles she'd fought--but Leia remembered _her_ Jaina saving Zekk from the dark side, risking her life to save Tahiri, watching out for Jag for years after their relationship ended, fighting endlessly against the Yuuzhan Vong so that beings she'd never met could live. Her Jaina had understood that no cause was ever truly lost that still had someone to fight for it.  
  
"No, I'm not," Leia said softly, mourning quietly for the brave, hopeful, loving girl that had once inhabited the shell that stood across from her now. "Just disappointed."  
  
Jaina's jaw worked, and though she was clearly on the verge of speaking, she just turned and walked away, carrying Leia's best hopes with her--but not her _last_ hopes.  
  
Leia watched her go, then brushed her dirty hands off on her pants and headed for the bridge.  
  
There was work to do.


End file.
